Paper Red
by Erase Him in the White Silk
Summary: Audrey/Agent Cooper. Originally published in the Rare Women Fanfiction Exchange on AO3. Written for Siddals.


~oOo~

_Your flames are flames that kiss me dead ~ Robert Smith_

~oOo~

* * *

After the ride home with her father and Agent Cooper, Audrey wanted to be alone; to lie down, though she'd just waken.  
Nothing her parents could say was of any importance, and she didn't want to deal with them. She didn't want to deal with anything. Closing the door she removed her shoes before lowering herself to the comforting stillness of her bed.

Raw were the crooks of her arms, senses drifting. Her consciousness in the surrounding air. She existed in and out of induced dreams. At One-Eyed Jack's her visions had been gray and clouded, filtered in transparency, steeped in cold, strange darkness. A type borne of the unknown; of fear. She'd felt hands wrapped around her own, a body falling with hers through impassable distances, and had heard Agent Cooper's voice breaking through the barriers. The hands around her were his. He'd calmed her, kept her from a worse fate.

She'd merged with him in that state.

Audrey, with the spirit of her special agent, traversed the dark lake beds and tangle weeds not knowing how to escape.

After an eternity she awoke to find Agent Cooper beside her bed, his eyes full of concern, his hand burning into her cheek. Audrey knew of no other in the room save him, though the voices of many cast their weight.

She didn't want to leave. Never wanted to.

Ben Horne hovered over her side, violating the place she seconds ago had held dear. Calmness left her and was replaced by the drenched memories of her father forcing open the curtains surrounding her bed, a porcelain mask over her face.

She hated him.

Audrey damned her father for joining her on the drive home, she wanted more of what she had left. The feeling that now she would associate with that bed, that room in the Bookhouse she would never see again.

She had so much to tell Agent Cooper.

In the perfume of her sheets she grew tired, still reeling from the drugs of One-Eyed Jack's. Audrey pictured her special agent and ran her bare foot over the cool comforter where she wanted him, wishing she could feel his arms around her.

She'd find a way to tell him everything.

A noise outside the door broke Audrey from her thoughts. Turning she saw no one and her heart sank, knowing that her mother didn't care enough to even open the door and peek through. Sylvia was away regardless of when she was near. Closing her eyes again to find sleep, Audrey was shocked by a sudden embrace, and cries she knew as Johnny's soon muffled her ear.

"I missed you too."

* * *

~oOo~

* * *

Searching for an untold amount of time, sometimes with Laura, sometimes with a woman she didn't know whose dress was stained with blood, she eventually found Dale Cooper.

She saw him from behind, his legs giving out, his body sinking. A small man in a red suit ran palms over the other, making water the floor. She was walking toward him when BOB appeared from thin air, threatening Audrey in flames with a vision of herself; a mirror in whitened eyes. Convulsing, BOB threw his head back to emit a howl.

".eerf eb reven ll'ouY"

In a haze Audrey felt herself moving. Her steps progressing through the Lodge, as if on their own accord, through the maze of chevron and blood until suddenly she and Dale were under a starry sky in the middle of the forest, surrounded by 12 bare trees.

Dale fell to the ground, coughing; his free hand to his blood-stained shirt. He was not himself, nearly mad from his years in the Lodge, but she would not let go his hand.

For reasons unknown to herself Audrey remained calm, touching her fingers to the veins of his wrist in a pulsing manner until he began to breathe normally.

Ushering Dale to the car she drove to the Pine View Motel, away from her family, and stayed with him through hours that were not real.

Audrey alerted Dale's friends of his escape. They visited, offering comfort, but could discern from his withdrawal that Cooper was Audrey's alone. Her care was what was anchoring him to Earth, what was preventing him from fading. They would in time know him again as he was, but for now they understood they should not expect their friend to so quickly emerge from the shadows.

Sheriff Truman informed Audrey that BOB was no longer tethered to a body. The night before, around the time of Agent Cooper's escape, his doppelganger had seemingly committed suicide while imprisoned. His body had disappeared as they went to inspect it, a filmy haze exiting his crown as an aura as they entered the cell. Hawk believed BOB had in that way returned to The Black Lodge, concluding that the Dugpa could now be anywhere, or anyone.

Audrey knew, according to lore, that the force residing in the woods had existed for hundreds of years. If no other before them had found a way to banish it's evil how would they? The most they could do was keep it at bay. Use what knowledge they had gained from previous victims to instruct others of ways in which to fight if sought as a host. But that could only go so far until death occurred, whether it be self sacrifice or no.

She didn't inform Cooper, there was no sense. He knew already, by a partially opened window to BOB's mind, that his doppelganger had ruined his life. That shortly after he had been sentenced to the hell within the Lodge, Annie Blackburne had died. In a semi-conscious state she'd bled to death in the hospital. Her wounds caused by the steel instruments of the room surrounding her, the hands performing her surgery his own. No one had seen it as it happened, aside from himself. And he'd been powerless to stop it.

His stand-in had left the FBI, taking a job as a pharmacist. In thin plastic gloves he had returned at night to Dead Dog Farm, so near the woods.

Alone.

It had been easy in the beginning. No one had suspected him. He and his surgery in the woods. Aid to the beast incarnate. After time, fear took root causing even those who had before trusted him with their lives to doubt. To avoid him. To dread seeing the man in dark driving by, walking the streets in the dead of night.

He had no idea how many people he'd harmed. How many he'd killed.

In a corner of the floor she would find him crying as she came back from an errand, from another room. Lying beside him she would run her hand over his hair before embracing him.

She was willing to wait forever.

Cooper told her what he'd seen in black and white. In sheets he would whisper of nightmares. He spoke often of his mother, Caroline, a girl named Marie. How in time he'd seen all those whom he'd lost, even if they were only mirages of blood.

He was distant, forlorn. His words sometimes muffled as he sank deeper into a pillow. Audrey listened, her face unreadable. As always, something unspoken lingered above them as thick as hovering smoke.

His love of Tibet was leaving his lips when one night he wandered, staring into her blue eyes. She'd smiled, loving him as he was uncharacteristically silent, and that was when he put his hand on the hollow of her neck, gently, warmly.

When he kissed her it was his death; he was reborn.

* * *

~oOo~


End file.
